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I don’t stop to think. I lunge for the door latch to throw myself out of the car.

Before I can open it, an arm shoots back from the front seat and grabs my good wrist.

Ruslan’s face is turned toward me, his eyes wide. “Cora—no.”

I thrash wildly against his grip, sobbing and shrieking uncontrollably, “What are you doing? Let me go! I need to help Zevran!”

29

Cora

“Get down!” Ruslan barks at me, forcefully driving my head toward my knees.

“What—”

“Down! Stay down!”

Through the front windshield, I catch a flash of a dark SUV with a silver grille careening straight toward us through the intersection. The car that T-boned Zevran. Dark silhouettes shift in the cabin, and through the glass, I can see raised automatic weapons.

Demyan floors it. The engine shrieks, and I’m hurled sideways, my shoulder slamming hard into the door. I grab the handhold with my good hand, curling into a tight ball as the streetlights streak overhead.

“Zevran,” I gasp, his name a broken, terrified whimper. “Zevran—”

“He’ll be fine. Focus on staying down,” Demyan yells back over the roar of the engine.

You don’t know that.

The horrifying image flashes behind my eyes. Metal crumpling like paper, glass raining down on the asphalt, his car spinning out like a broken toy. We’re leaving him behind, injured, bleeding and possibly dying. Maybe already—

An agonizing pain pierces my chest.

Zevran can’t be dead.

My last moments with the man I love can’t have been spent with both of us hurting, separated by a closed car door and a wall of unspoken fear.

The SUV swerves violently to the right. My cast cracks hard against the armrest, and a blinding jolt of agony shoots straight up my arm to my shoulder. I bite my lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

Demyan pitches us into a turn so sharp my body leaves the seat entirely. Another hard, screeching left. Then the engine settles into a furious whine along a straightaway. For a handful of seconds, the entire world narrows to the speeding car and the thunderous beat of my own heart in my ears.

“We lost them,” Demyan pants, his chest heaving as he glances in the rearview mirror.

I start to push myself up, forcing my aching, terrified body to—

The world shatters around us.

It’s not a full head-on collision, but a brutal, bone-jarring assault as the SUV hurtles out of a dark side alley, ramming our rear quarter panel with sickening force. Tires scream against asphalt as we lose traction, spinning once, twice, before the rear wheels mount the curb and skid to a halt.

Silence hangs in the air for a single heartbeat.

Then the front and back windshields shatter.

“Get down! Get down, get—”

The gunfire is deafening. It fills the car with explosions that vibrate in my teeth and echo inside my skull. Glass rains down over my back and shoulders as Demyan and Ruslan return fire. I press myself flat against the floor carpet, my arms wrapped tightly over my head, every muscle in my body shaking uncontrollably.

“Cora, stay—” Ruslan’s voice cuts off with a pained grunt.

I lift my head through the smoke.